CCMIN071602 - Laserfiche WebLink

the flow going through town. He believed some of the assumptions for the traffic model need to be changed. He did not think Highway 84 would ever be four lanes. He did not think this was the right forum to discuss the West Las Positas interchange, but he felt that needs to be considered in the model. If the interchanges are built, will it actually change anything? It is a quality of life issue regarding the children having to cross these intersections. He indicated the Montevino/Vineyard intersection has a morning backup of 286 seconds, but when Neal School is built, he felt that would go down. In addition to build out figures, he felt the building of schools should be considered in the model. He again commended staff on a job well done and felt this tool could help find ways of solving some quality of life issues in the city. Jeff Renholts, 7489 Aster Court, asked if this model could be used for regional traffic. Are other agencies using a similar tool or could they use this model? Could there he demonstrations of the model for the public? Is data continuing to be collected to update the information for the model? He complained about signal timing in Hacienda Business Park, when he has had to sit at traffic signals with no cross traffic coming. It should not take 15 minutes to go from West Las Positas and Willow to the BART station, but it seems to. He asked when Council would be reviewing the West Las Positas interchange. He remembered that it had been delayed until the completion of this traffic model. Mr. Knowles indicated the model covers the nine county Bay Area and the regional traffic is included along with jobs and housing. It is a good tool for analyzing the traffic that passes through the Valley. Although there is not detailed information about San Joaquin traffic, staff does have volume numbers. Other traffic models cannot do what the Pleasanton model can do. It is more dynamic in terms of routing traffic off the freeways onto city streets, measuring freeway delay, etc. In recent discussions about prioritizing projects for Pleasanton, Livermore and Dublin, the engineers agree that this model is preferred. It is anticipated that more and more models will be using this state-of-the-art technology. He also noted that some models are designed for regional issues and do not care about local streets. He said staff is always taking on-going traffic counts to measure effectiveness of various traffic mitigations. Regarding signal timing, he noted that the signal timing mechanisms in place now are generations old. With the installation of the new computer system, every signal will be retimed and should work better. He also noted in Hacienda Business Park, there was a street overlay project which unfortunately destroyed many of the street detectors. That may be why Mr. Renholts experienced problems in the last month or so. He fmther explained that the route Mr. Renholts described was not the main route. He was not talking about consecutive green lights on Stoneridge or West Las Positas or Hopyard. Quite often short cuts down Willow, Chabot or similar streets might not be the primary recommended route and the driver would find more delay in a coordinated system, when trying to bypass the main roads. Most of the green time is given to the main streets. The idea is to have the main streets work more efficiently so drivers are not taking Chabot or Willow to get to BART. Mayor Pico referred to the request for live demonstrations of the model, and felt that was possible. He was looking forward to enacting various "what if' scenarios using the model. This is not only moving cars, but we are building a community for people. He did not intend to have a model just for automobiles, but to see how to make Pleasanton a better place to live, work and do business. This is a new tool and he was very excited about it. Pleasanton City Council 9 07/16/02 Minutes